Prayer Gives Woman Hope For Jewish New Year

Max Ortiz

The Detroit News

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins at sundown today and is observed through Saturday by Reform Jews and until sundown Sunday by Conservative and Orthodox Jews. The year, according to the lunar calendar, is 5761.

Rosh Hashanah is a time for both prayer and celebration, the latter with traditional foods including round bread (challah) and apples dipped in honey, symbolizing sweetness for the new year. The observance begins the High Holy Days, a period of repentance which culminates in a fast on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, this year on Oct. 9.

By Suzanne Chessler

Special to The Detroit News

West Bloomfield Township -- When Marilyn Berman attends temple services to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which begins at sundown today, she will be praying for a family she never met.

They are people whose names she probably will never know and who first came to her attention during the holiday last year.

Berman will be praying for an organ donor and the donor's family who brought the answer to her holiday prayers almost as fast as she spoke them.

For Berman, it doesn't seem like it's been a year since she postponed a kidney dialysis appointment from an afternoon to the next morning so she could attend the first evening service of Rosh Hashanah.

As part of the holiday observance, Jewish worshipers ask to be written into the "Book of Life" for another year, and that was of particular importance for Berman, who had been waiting for a second kidney transplant for two years.

The kidney she received in 1986 was failing, and she needed dialysis on a kidney machine three times a week.

Berman had invited her mother, Ida Lucas, for a formal dinner before the two headed out to Temple Shir Shalom, where Lucas was a member. Berman, a West Bloomfield widow with a grown daughter in New York, often relied on her mother to drive her to appointments.

"I prayed for good health and trusted that God would know when the time for the transplant would be best," says Berman, 58, who was on kidney waiting lists at two outstate hospitals and also at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.

"The holiday service was wonderful, and when the Ark was open, I felt a new kind of warmth," she recalls. "I sensed that everything was going to be OK."

After the service, mother and daughter returned to Berman's home, planning to get up early for the dialysis regimen.

"We were in the kitchen, and I said to my mother, "I just have a feeling that 5760 (the year on Jewish calendars) is going to be the best year because the numbers in 5760 add up to 18 (a lucky number in Judaism),' " Berman recalls. "We were having some tea and honey cake, and then the phone rang. It was a Beaumont doctor telling me they had a kidney for me and I was to be at the hospital the next morning for surgery."

Astonished, Berman duly arrived at Beaumont where the operation was performed successfully.

Needing a second kidney transplant is not unusual, says Dr. Leslie Rocher, chief of transplant services at Beaumont, but results can be excellent.

"Recipients can return to a level of functioning that antedates the chronic disease, and I think faith can help." says Rocher. "Kidney disease can be overwhelming, and faith and family support give patients reasons to persevere when life is not as easy."

Berman's perseverance is something Rabbi Daniel Syme of Temple Beth El, where she is a member, knows about. While waiting for a kidney, Berman had asked the rabbi to say a daily prayer for her health.

"As a rabbi and a mystic, I not only believe in miracles, I depend on them," Rabbi Syme says. "I know it's not a coincidence that Marilyn got her kidney on Rosh Hashanah. I know she made a connection with God that's beyond anything that we can understand.

"I have seen events that could only be divine intervention for people who have prayed or for whom I have prayed, and I became a rabbi under similar circumstances. When I was 20 years old, I was diagnosed with a cancer that was 99 percent fatal. After eight hours of surgery, the doctor noted that the cancer had not spread and could offer no medical explanation. I chose to become a rabbi because I wanted to make the miracle really matter."

Berman, who also knows more vividly than ever what it means to be written into the Book of Life, says her healing experience has deepened her spiritually.

"I wake up with a sense of well-being that I haven't felt in years," she says. "I'm much calmer and very grateful. I'm more involved with spiritual things.

"When I go to Rosh Hashanah services this weekend, I will, of course, give thanks, pray for the peace of the donor and the donor's family and ask that every person on dialysis finds a kidney."

Copyright © 2000 The Detroit News.

This article posted October 19, 2000.